


our finish line won't disappear

by rockygetsrolling



Series: the bizarre and beautiful life of james w. gordon [7]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Gotham Central, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Jim Gordon, BAMF Jimmy Olsen, Canon-Typical Violence, Cop-Reporter Dynamic, F/M, Gen, Jim Gordon Gets Another Redheaded Kid With The Same Name As Him, Jim Needs A Drink And Jimmy Is Way Too Excited, Kidnapping, Millennial Humor, Mostly Gen, Mystery, Nondescript Trafficking, Sarah Just Wants To Sleep Goddamnit, Slighty-Antagonistic to Father-&-Son Relationship Development, casefic, original villain characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 18:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockygetsrolling/pseuds/rockygetsrolling
Summary: A man that looks like him wakes Jim from his rest and proclaims the rise of the Kraken; he is coming to Gotham, and his greedy arms are stretching for everything.Jim is really,reallytired, but a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do. And maybe, just maybe, he'll find another piece of his pottery family along the way.OR: Jim Gordon and Jimmy Olsen bond. And stop a crime lord or two while they're at it.
Relationships: Clark Kent & James "Jimmy" Olsen, James "Jimmy" Olsen & Maggie Sawyer, Jim Gordon & Clark Kent, Jim Gordon & James "Jimmy" Olsen, Jim Gordon & Lois Lane, Lois Lane & James "Jimmy" Olsen, Maggie Sawyer & Jim Gordon, Sarah Essen/Jim Gordon
Series: the bizarre and beautiful life of james w. gordon [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1469735
Kudos: 43





	our finish line won't disappear

Jim is pretty okay with people crawling in through his windows and picking his locks at four in the morning. That’s normal. Hell, it’s routine for him at this point.

What he is definitely  _ not _ okay with is repetitive, raucous door-knocking and bell-ringing at four in the morning.

Groggily, he sits up, his precious hours of sleep blown apart by the racket at his front door. His mouth tastes like dirt, asphalt, and  _ really  _ cheap whiskey from the Ivy car-chase catastrophe from earlier that night. Beside him, Sarah pulls a pillow over her head and lets out a loud, angry groan.

“If this is what it’s gonna be like living with you, I’m going to have a fucking conniption.”

“I promise you, this is a complete fucking outerlier.” He shoves himself to his feet, wobbling a bit when he does. God, he hates getting old. “Stay here, I got it.”

“I sure fucking hope you do, or I’m leaving tomorrow morning and I’m taking everything in my drawer.”

“Fair enough.” He pulls on his robe (yes, it’s fuzzy and pink, it was a Christmas gift from Maggie) and heads out of the room, his fury building as the racket continues.

“Jesus mother _ fucking _ Christ,” he whispers to himself, “this must be one determined fucking door-to-door salesman.” He almost tears the door off its hinges in his rush, and his anger is certainly not alleviated when the doorbell keeps going. 

“I’m gonna ask you  _ once _ to stop and get the eff off my porch—”

The doorbell finally, mercifully stops. “Are you James Gordon, Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department?”   
  


Jim stares with sleep-blind eyes at the kid—it  _ has  _ to be a kid—on his doorstep. He’s dressed in torn blue jeans and a zipped black leather jacket, both of which are completely impractical against the bitter February air. This kid also has red hair and freckles and icecap-blue eyes, and looks way too much like Jim did when he was younger. Suffice to say that this encounter is mildly unnerving, and Jim racks his brains to remember if he ever unintentionally time-traveled when he was in high school. His search comes up empty.

“Yes,” he grunts, because what else can he do? He runs a hand over his eyes slowly. “Can I inquire as to whom I’m speaking to?”

The kid holds out his hand, smartly. “Jimmy Olsen, photographer for the Daily Planet, sir.”

_ And this just went from weird to straight-up Freudian, _ Jim thinks.

“Look, kid, I dunno why the hell you’re here now, unless you want to take headshots of me looking like a gargoyle in a bathrobe and flannel pants—

“Clark told me to come to you.”

Jim feels a single snap of adrenaline enter his bloodstream. “What did you just say?”

The kid—Jimmy, not a hard name to remember—rolls his eyes exhaustedly. “Clark told me that if there was something wrong in Metropolis to come to you. He said I could trust you to put a good word in. Or something.”

It’s funny, how fast that sentence kicks Jim’s cop instincts into high gear. His old eyes shoot up, searching the darkness for what he knows is bad news.

Visible over Jimmy’s left shoulder, a human-shaped figure stands just beyond the light from the streetlamp across the road. Jim knows immediately that this is suspicious because a) he can tell that those clothes are too nice for him to be one of the city’s many homeless citizens, b) there’s no drug peddling in a neighborhood like this, or at the very least not open drug peddling, and c) there are no bus stops near this street.

His hand snaps out and grabs Jimmy’s upper arm. “Get inside,” he snarls, pulling the boy into his foyer and slamming the door shut.

“Ow, jeez,” Jimmy says, rubbing the place where Jim’s hand was moments before. “A little warning beforehand next time, maybe?”

Jim doesn’t answer as he bolts the door shut, then types in the six-digit code to his brand-new security system— _ thanks, Babs. _ He had never been one for something like that until Cuchulain’s attack, when he realized that he wasn’t exactly in the best shape to defend himself all the time.

“Dude, what—?” Jimmy starts, but doesn’t finish; Jim grabs him by the collar of his jacket and shoves him down and behind the wall separating the foyer and living room from the kitchen. 

“Stay there,” he growls, and the kid’s eyes flash with fear.

“Why—?”

Jim yanks a spare handgun and clip out of their duck-tape bindings, tucked away under the keytable, and Jimmy’s eyes widen almost comically.

“You were followed,” Jim says calmly as he loads his gun. “Stay here and stay down. Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t  _ breathe _ if you can help it.”

“But—”

“What did I just say?” He doesn’t mean to sound so damn crotchety, but he was just woken up with only an hour and a half of sleep to his name, pulled from his warm bed by a racket, and is now facing the possibility of a shoot-out because of an overconfident reporter kid.

A typical Tuesday night, or is it Wednesday morning?

“James?”

Jim looks up the staircase at Sarah, who’s wearing some of Jim’s borrowed clothes and clutching her department-issued Glock. 

“James, what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know. We might be in some shit. Stay low.”

Jim watches with something like admiration as that little spark ignites in her eyes, the spark that screams  _ don’t fuck with me, I have a job to do. _ She gets low, creeping down the stairs a la  _ Mission Impossible _ , only the stakes are much higher and much more real.

They’re crouched under the window in the living room, just barely out of sight from anyone in front of the house, when Sarah notices Jimmy peering from the other side of the wall.

“Tell me you let him in.”

“I did.”

“James.”

“Hand to God.”

Sarah nods at Jimmy, who gives a slight nod back.

“Kid, where’d you come from?” Jim asks roughly. “How’d you get here?”

“I came through the Upper East Side, I thought it was safe—”

“Kid,  _ how did you get here. _ ”

“I took my car. It’s parked up the road.”

Jim does a sarcastic little nod. “I hope you have a good insurance company.”

Jimmy whimpers a bit, like the thought of having to do anything through insurance pains him. “Dude, I’m a grad student, what makes you think I have insurance?

Somewhere up the street, a car alarm starts blaring.

“Motherfucker,” Sarah whispers.

“That car was worth more than my life,” Jimmy groans.

“Don’t be so sure,” Jim says as a car—Jimmy’s car—passes by outside the house. Definitely hotwired. “You still got your wallet and papers, kid? Cuz if you don’t, you might be in some deep shit.”

“Okay, I’m not  _ that _ stupid.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Sarah mutters, cautiously rising to peer through the window. “Clear.”

Jim flips his safety on and rounds on Jimmy, who looks ready to sink through the floor. “Kid, you got some  _ really _ good explaining to do.”

=

“I told you, man, I was  _ told _ to come here.”

Jimmy stares at the two stony-eyed, fire-hearted cops with something like terror, and Jim almost feels bad for him. But it’s still dark and cold out at five in the morning, Jim is running on less than two hours of sleep, and he’s still pissed that he even had to worry about the possibility of Sarah or Jimmy being in danger.

“By Clark?”

Jimmy nods. “He said, and I quote, that you were the guy to trust with this, since he and Lois are both out of commission.”

“Why are they out of commission, if I dare ask?” Sarah growls, who looks more exhausted than Jim if that’s even possible. Standing with her arms folded over her chest behind Jim’s chair, her black-hole eyes sharp as iron, she makes a formidable figure in the dim light of Jim’s kitchen.

Jimmy is understandably terrified, but answers, albeit shakily. “Clark is off-world with J’onn for JL business and Lois is Ottawa doing a report on the Native Justice Riots. But there’s a case they were working with me before they left, and I stupidly said I could handle it on my own, but I  _ can’t _ , so I came to you.”

“A case.” Jim leans back in his seat and rubs his temples with his fingertips. “Kid, I’m the chief of police for this godforsaken city, how many  _ other _ cases do you think I have before this one?”

“But this one’s  _ important _ —”

_ That _ is what sets Jim off. One of his hands comes down hard on the table, and he doesn’t even have the decency to look sorry when Jimmy jumps.

“Listen to me, kid,” he rumbles, and yeah, he sounds like a complete jackass, but he’s been on edge for too long. “I have millions of people that I’ve been assigned to protect. There is no one case that’s more important than another, not in my book, and if you think this case takes priority  _ just _ because I’m tight with Clark and Lois, then you’re gravely mistaken. So either you give me a legitimate explanation as to why I should care about this case or I call a patrol car to take you back to Metropolis.”

Clearly Jimmy hadn’t thought about the possibility of a refusal in-depth, because he sits silently, gaping and floundering like a beached fish.

Jim sighs. “I’ll call Schmidt to come get you—”

“Have you ever heard of The Kraken?”

Sarah groans. “Kid, seriously.”

“I  _ am _ serious. You’ve heard of it, right? Everyone has.”

“Yes,” Jim says, searching for Otto’s name in his contacts. “ _ Below the thunders of the upper deep, the Kraken sleepeth— _ ”

“It’s a giant, powerful monster, right?” Jimmy presses on, almost frantically. “Huge, like, big enough to span continents—?”

“If I recall, Alfred Lord Tennyson never clarified how big it was—” 

“—and could get his hands into anything if he wanted to?”

Jim stops looking, directing his gaze into the uncomfortably familiar eyes of the reporter. “What are you telling us right now.”

“The reason I’m here.” Jimmy leans over the table and lowers his voice to a whisper, like he’s scared he’ll be heard. “There’s a guy that the MPD is trying to find. No one knows his real name, but everyone knows him as Kraken. He pretty much  _ rules  _ the black market in the Northeast. He’s got guys in every shady business you can think of: arms, drugs, shady Chinese knick-knacks, you name it, he’s in it. The only thing he  _ won’t  _ do is the people shit, like human trafficking or porn running.”

“Glad to know some crime lords have a moral limitation,” Sarah grouses. 

Jimmy pushes on, stubbornly. “Look, I’m telling you this because there’s a rumor he’s here in Gotham. That’s why I’m here to find you. Clark was closing in on him when he was called away and he trusted me to find him. I figured no one would know this place better than you. You’re  _ famous _ for being a brass-bending street cop.”

“You want me to help you find a semi-moralistic gun runner just because you know who I am?”

“Not just that.” Jimmy’s eyes snap into solidity. “It’s because the Justice League trusts you. It’s because  _ Batman  _ trusts you. How many other cops do you think they trust the way they do with you?”

Jim answers with steady silence, his thumb hovering over the Call button under Otto’s name. 

“Bar none, right?” Jimmy presses.

“Still isn’t enough to justify this entire episode. You come to my home at four in the morning, make a huge racket, put us all in danger, and now you’re asking me to drop everything and hunt down a crime lord that I’ve never even heard of?”

“That’s exactly why I need  _ you!  _ Who else would’ve handled it the way you did? You’re the best there is--”

“Appealing to my ego doesn’t work, just FYI.”

Jimmy looks almost defeated, and Jim hates to admit it, but he’s relieved. 

“Look,” the reporter tries one more time, “would you rather find out that I’m wrong out in the field where you can chew me out for a bit and bail, or in your office when the news comes on talking about a weapons shipment that the GCPD somehow didn’t know about and have to deal with the follow-up?”

Jim meets the kid’s eyes and finds himself looking at a scarily accurate reflection of himself circa 1987: young, passionate, stubborn, and, for better or worse, very correct in the face of a superior. 

_ Damn reporters. _

With a heavy sigh, Jim places a hand over his eyes and peers at his much younger counterpart through his fingers. 

“Am I right?” Jimmy says bitterly. 

Jim hates to admit it, but he is.

“Alright, kid,” he says, “you have the next eight hours to prove to me that there’s something going on. If there’s nothing hard, you’re going home.”   


Jimmy’s eyes light up, and he lunges across the table to grab Jim’s hand and shake it. “Thank you, sir, I promise I won’t let you down—

“Don’t promise what you can’t prove,” Sarah says, her eyes dark with wrath, and Jim knows that to be true. Every Gotham cop does.

But Jimmy looks sharp and determined—like him, when he was that age—and Jim can’t bring himself to say no. Besides, this kid might be right, and that’s where the fun will begin.


End file.
